Friday, December 26, 2014

Hey everybody. It's been much longer than I had planned between blog posts. What better way to jump back in than a blog hop?!

As we get ready for a new year, I know it's very stressful for teachers coming back to school after a long winter break. I, myself, am still wrapping my brain around planning for a new semester, but have no fear! My friends and I over at The Teaching Tribune are here to help you out!

To celebrate the new year, we are each posting a quick and easy FREE printable product that you can use when you get back to school AND you have the chance to win an Amazon gift card. All you have to do is hop around to each of our blogs, download the freebies, and then enter to win an Amazon Gift Card at the last stop :)

If you want to check out this product in its entirety, it's available in my store HERE. I hope you have all have a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year, and Happy any other holiday you may celebrate. :)

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Are any of you as crazy as I am when it comes to organization in your classrooms? I love things to be in the right place and neat. My mind seems cluttered when my classroom is, so I try to minimize the "stuff" in my room.

One of the things that drives me batty is the way that my students' desks manage to drift throughout the day. The rows and groups will be perfectly straight at the beginning of the day, and 2 hours in, someone's desk is practically in Alabama. I've heard of zip ties being used to secure desks together, but I don't think that I'm ready to go that far and make such a permanent decision of desk placement; I'd like to be able to decide quickly (without having to cut desks loose from each other) to move someone to a different location or to shift the desks for an activity.

I decided to use a technique that we used back in my old musical theatre days to solve this problem. You see, in a play, set placement is incredibly important because the location of the set pieces impact where the characters move. On a stage, glow-in-the-dark tape is used to mark the corners of pieces so that during a set change, items can go EXACTLY into the same place for each performance. Now, we aren't exactly doing quick set changes during the school day, but I thought this idea could come in handy.

I recently changed my students' seating arrangement and thought this would be the perfect time to get things in order. Once all of the desks were placed, I went around to each of the "end" desks of a row or column or group, and placed the tape in an "L" around the outside leg of the desk. My students watched me curiously, wondering what I was doing, and slowly they started figuring it out. They thought it was a great idea and I often see them shifting their desks slightly into the correct spot. I even have a student that goes around at the end of each day and makes sure that all of the desks are in their places within the tape. (I didn't even ask her to - she just does it!) It has worked out perfectly so far and I'm hoping it will continue.

I'm so glad that I decided to come with a solution for the "wandering desks" and I'd love to hear how you keep your classroom desks organized.

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Hey everybody! It's time for Chalk Talk with my friends and I over at The Primary Chalkboard. We're all back to share more great tips and resources that you can use in your classrooms.

This month I'm going to be explaining about how I use reading organizers to keep track of my students' reading goals, as well as intervene whenever students are struggling to meet theirs. Check out my video!

If you want to use my reading organizers in your own classroom to track your students' Accelerated Reader goals, or even just track your students' daily reading, you can find them **HERE**.

Now don't forget to head on over to The Primary Chalkboard to see what resources and tips my friends have for you. I hope your school year is off to a great start. Before you know it, we'll be on winter break!

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Hey everybody! If you weren't able to take advantage of TpT's Back to School 2-Day Sale a few weeks ago, you have another chance! TpT is having a 1-day Boost sale for Back to School savings. The sale will run starting at midnight on Wednesday, August 20 until midnight on Thursday. You have allllll of Wednesday to save!

Thursday, August 14, 2014

I have been back to school for 2 weeks now and I'm really excited to share my Back to School bulletin board with you. Since social media is quite the craze and I just got on Instagram (@terrysteachingtidbits), I thought it would be fun to incorporate that idea into my new board.

Here is what I came up with:

I made a colorful Instagram profile page for each of my students (copied onto card stock for durability). I put each student's name on a piece of paper below their profile in Instagram fashion - mine is @missabromitis. The first week of school, I took each of their pictures and put them on their profile. I had each student go to their profile page and write a fun back to school comment with hash tags to go along with it. Some of the hash tags they used were: #backtoschool #WWII #math, etc. It was pretty cool to see. **I apologize for not posting the complete picture of my board, but I don't post my students' faces on my blog**

Are you wondering where I got the Instagram template?

Well, I have a surprise for you :) You can download it free HERE. I took a screen shot of my actual Instagram page and put white text boxes over all of the personal info. You could use this in so many ways and I'm hoping to think of another idea for these later in the year. I hope you like it!

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Hey everybody. I wanted to share a fun tip with you on how to shake things up in your classroom when it comes to having your students work on a new skill you've taught. Worksheets can get pretty boring after a while and my students often get antsy. I have been using task cards with my students for the last two years now. It's a great way to add some movement to their activities. For my 5th graders, though, sometimes even task cards become a little monotonous so I wanted to try something different.

In my newest product, Divisibility Detective, I have an activity where each of my students becomes a number. They walk around the room and meet other "numbers"and complete the divisibility task. How do they know their numbers? To give them their numbers, I actually printed them onto shipping labels so that my students could wear them just like name tags. The shipping labels are 2" x 4" and come 10 to a page. I had to format my page to make sure they printed correctly. I decided to give it the detective theme to make it a little more exciting and fun.

Once my students had their name tags on and were given a recording sheet, they set out to find friends in the room, write down their number, and then test each one for the divisibility rules of 2, 3, 5, 6, 9. and 10. I also gave some students a recording sheet that included 4 and 8 to challenge them.

Here's what it looked like in my classroom today:

The best part about this activity is that it can be done with ANYTHING. You can create other math task cards (or language arts) and print them onto labels. Instead of having students going to a desk for a task card and working alone, students have to approach each other and interact. They also have to go up to students in the class that they may not normally speak to.

Monday, August 11, 2014

Hey everybody! I am PUMPED (and a little bit nervous) about this post. I have ventured into something I have never done before and I'm ready to share it with you. My blogging friends and I at the Primary Chalkboard wanted to do something HUGE for back to school for you. I'm talking gigantic.

We decided to throw a party. Hint: it is a YouTube Partaaaaay! We are here sharing lots of tips -- organizational, DIY, helpful ideas-- lots of things you can do RIGHT NOW to make your back to school run smoothly! That's not all. We are having a huge giveaway! How would you like to win….a $100 Amazon Gift Card
or
$100 TeachersPayTeachers Gift Card
or
A fabulous Michael Kors bag (you know, the one you want but can't justify spending the money for, especially on a teacher's salary)?

Yep. I thought so. If you're like me, you've spent some money at the TpT Back to School sale and maybe forgot to purchase a few things or have run out of money to get more.

So what do you need to do?

Did you see that?
You can EVEN gain EXTRA entries in the giveaway by watching our videos and entering our SECRET WORDS into the Rafflecopter - that means more chances to win! We will be linking up 5 new videos every day this week... so you can come back, watch, and enter every single day!

Now for my YouTube debut...In my video, I will be showing you how I organize student textbooks in my classroom. Check it out!

Thursday, August 7, 2014

I don't know about you, but one of my favorite things about teaching 5th grade is the level of responsibility you can give to your students. Our days are packed with curriculum and there is so much to do that I just can't do it all myself. In order to keep my classroom working efficiently I have come up with a jobs system that I call my "Class Careers".

On the first week of school, I hand out a "Careers" packet to my students. This contains a list of class jobs that we need for our room, along with a description of each job, and an application for the students to fill out. I call them careers because I actually have my students perform one job for the entire year. For those of you who can easily implement a job rotation weekly or evenly monthly, I applaud you. I just don't have the stamina to keep track of that and, quite frankly, I like having my students learn one job REALLY well so that I can depend on them in any situation to complete (unexpected absences, etc.).

Once I hand out the Class Careers Packet, I go over all of the job descriptions with my students and get them excited about each and every one. If you make every job important in your class, you will have at least one person that will want to do it. One of my favorite jobs that we have is called "tech support". I started this job in my class because I was struggling to help students in the computer lab when there were about 12 computers acting up and only one of me to help my kids. I always happen to have many quick, computer-savvy students who are eager to jump and help their friends, so this is the perfect job for them to have. They feel such a sense of pride in fixing things for their classmates and it truly helps me during stressful technological situations.

After we have gone over all of the jobs, I have them fill out an application so that I can be sure they understand the responsibilities of the job they apply for, as well as explain to me what qualities they possess that will make them perfect for that role. Each year I am impressed by the responses my students come up with. Here are a few from this year:

Since we start school on a Monday, I have applications due Friday and I have all jobs chosen the following Monday. In order to help decide, I created an organizer where I can write down all the names of people who applied for each job, along with their choice ranking. I try to fulfill all first choices first and then make my way down through second choices. I haven't ever really had an issue with someone not getting a job they wanted (knock on wood!).

I'm so excited to reveal my students' jobs on Monday and I'm truly looking forward to a fantastic new year with my incredible 5th graders. I hope you all have a great year as well!

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Hey everybody! I wanted to show you a quick way that I organize and collect back to school forms from parents at the beginning of the year.

At the end of our pre-planning week, we have an event called "Celebration of Learning" where students and parents meet the teacher. I have all of my forms ready for them at the event and ask them to fill them out there if they have the time so that I have as many collected before the first day of school as possible. This especially helps with knowing students' transportation!

On my white board, I have large envelopes that I tape the form to the front of so that they can visually see which form goes where, and then place that form inside of the envelope. I keep all the forms in these envelopes alphabetically to easily locate them.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Are you ready to head back to school? Well, we have some goodies for you to take with you :) The Teaching Tribunebloggers have teamed
up to bring you amazing freebies and the chance at one of TWO $50 TPT gift
certificates as well as a custom
door hanger(for a US winner).We
will select one US winner and one international winner for the gift certificates!

To play Hide and
Go Seek, you will hop to 20 blogs where you will collect freebies. Each of the freebies has a hidden school supply with a price tag. You will need to collect all 20
supplies and add up the prices on the tags. Once you have the sum, you will enter
to win two $50 TPT gift certificate as well as a custom door hanger at the final
stop, The Teaching Tribune.

Our giveaway will run Sunday, August 3rd and Monday, August 4th.

If you are looking for school supplies to
fill your backpack,then you are at the
right place! Start by downloading the recording form.

I am the 6th stop as you play Hide and Go Seek!

Are you ready? It's time to begin! Now all you need to do is download my freebie
and find the school supply! Next, you will complete a circle with the other
bloggers to collect their freebies and school supplies.

Click the Find my freebie button.

The freebie I have posted is one of the activities from my Back to School Math Activities for 5th grade. The activity has students using a school supply list and furniture/supplies with price tags to find shopping totals and complete word problems. Click on the picture below.

You can complete the loop by starting at the
first blog or continue on by visiting the next stop. Either way, you will make
a complete loop to all the blogs, freebies, supplies, and final prize! Don't forget to become a follower of our
blogs as you continue on. You never know what we will be doing next! Just click either picture below to continue Hide
and Go Seek...

Saturday, August 2, 2014

It's finally here!!! The annual TeachersPayTeachers Back to School Sale is coming up this Monday and Tuesday, August 4th and 5th! What does that mean?! I am listing my ENTIRE STORE at 20% off. In addition, TpT is giving 10% off of that for a combined discount of 28%. DON'T FORGET to use the promo code BTS14 when you check out to make sure you get the extra discount from TpT. I hope you have a wonderful store and are able to find some great new resources in your classroom this year!

I think we can all agree that summer has absolutely flown by this year. I can't believe my week of pre-planning is over and the first day of school is on Monday!

This week I've been hard at work in my classroom getting things organized and ready for my students. Check out what my classroom looks like this year:

I changed my desk organization from the way I had it at the beginning of last year. I tried this out at the end of the year and I really like how it allowed my room to have a lot more space.

I also love how I changed my reading corner this year. I used to have a bookshelf that came out from the wall to close off the reading corner, but it ended up becoming a blockade and I was unable to keep an eye on students from my desk. I solved this by placing a large table there which will function as an area to work with a small group. Now I can see through the table to the reading area. I also moved the other book case into another corner of my room to make a quiet reading area for another group of students.

Organization is huge for me. I've come up with a few methods of organization over the last couple years that have really worked. I like having paper trays for students to turn in assignments and notes. I also have great new supply cubbies! I put all student textbooks into cubbies to save room in their desks. My bulletin boards are always a struggle for me, so this year I wanted to try something fun. I created an Instagram bulletin board. I'll show more about this another time so stay tuned...

I also designed some labels to make a schedule that I can hang up. This year my schedule will be changing daily, so I need something that is functional for me to be able to move times and subjects around. I keep all homework written on the board by subject so that students can easily write it into their agendas. Putting felt on the bottom of my desks and chairs will hopefully eliminate some noise as students move about the classroom. Finally, one of my most exciting additions to my classroom….I'll call it….my shade puller??? I don't know what I can really call it, but this handy device is going to assist me in pulling my shades up and down. We have really high windows and I'm 5'1", so usually my shades are completely up, or completely down. This year I don't have to worry about that anymore and I can change them as I wish!

I hope you like my classroom as much as I do! I can't wait to show you more as the year continues.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

I'm so excited to introduce my first Two For Tuesday deal because I just finished it last night. My brand new Back to School Activities for 5th graders has all different kinds of math practice your incoming 5th graders.

The standards in the activities are from 4th grade so that you can see what skills your students have retained over the summer and what you may need to review before jumping into the 5th grade curriculum. There are activity pages and 3 sets of task cards. Regularly $4.50, today it's $2.25.

My second Two For Tuesday steal is Multiplying Decimals with Visual Models pack. This contains several mini lessons for teaching your students how to multiply decimals, and also includes models to help illustrate this skill. In addition to the mini lessons, it also contains a quiz and task cards for practice. This $3.50 product is $1.75 today.